A company that provides specialty chemicals and high-performance carbon materials and technologies, Ingevity Corporation will expand its carbon activation capacity at its Covington, Virginia. The expansion will meet growing global demand for pelletized carbon products.

The products are primarily for use in gasoline vapor emission control systems in cars, trucks, motorcycles and boats. The expansion will feature new processing, activation, purification and finishing equipment. Once completed, the facility’s total activation capacity will increase by approximately 20 percent. Representing an investment of $35-40 million, the project is expected to be operational by the fall of 2019.

“This capital-efficient expansion of our Covington plant is one of the key elements of our strategy and multi-year capital investment plan for this segment, which we began implementing in 2014 with the construction of a greenfield carbon activation plant in Zhuhai, China,” he added.

He added that the company is also currently constructing an activated carbon extrusion facility in Changshu, China, which is expected to be operational by this fall. In addition to the two carbon activation plants in Covington and China, Ingevity has an activation facility in Wickliffe, Kentucky, a “honeycomb” scrubber joint venture plant in Waynesboro, Georgia, and extrusion facilities in Covington and Wujiang, China.